Serendipity at the Coronet: A Year-Round Children’s Theater

Los Angeles will finally have a full-time, year-round resident professional children’s theater in a permanent space.

The Coronet Theatre, a mid-size Equity house in West Hollywood, will become home to the Serendipity Theatre Company in August.

That announcement was made by Jody Davidson, executive director of the newly formed children’s theater, who is leaving her job as general manager of the Laguna Moulton Playhouse in Laguna Beach, as of Dec. 30. The Serendipity artistic director will be her husband, Scott Davidson, who will leave his post as youth theater artistic director at Laguna Moulton on Sept. 30.

The Davidsons plan to begin contract negotiations this week with Actors’ Equity. They will take possession of the Coronet on Aug. 10, in preparation for an October opening.

The initial season includes Judy Blume’s “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing,” Arnold Lobel’s “Frog and Toad,” Aurand Harris’ “Androcles and the Lion,” Suzan Zeder’s “Doors” and a Chinese version of “Nightingale.” There will also be a Christmas show, “Merry Christmas, Strega Nona.”

“It has always astounded me that in the heart of the entertainment industry, there is no full-time professional theater for youth,” Jody Davidson said. “You’ve got communities much smaller than Los Angeles that have generated some of the best children’s theater in the country: Minneapolis, Seattle, Honolulu, Louisville.

“We wanted to produce quality children’s theater in a major area,” she said, “but we’ve been on hold with our plans because a facility was not available. When we found out the Coronet had become available, it was fate.”

Coronet owner Petrie Robie explained why she picked Serendipity as her leaseholder: “I need consistency. Jody Davidson was the first person who showed she was not just talking. She’s a realist, she’s very credible and she has a theatrical background. It may not be mainstream theater, but I think it’s going to be OK.”

Robie said people don’t remember that “very good children’s theater came out of the Coronet” when it was first built in 1946 by her mother. “She wrote, produced and trained young people, so it’s kind of come around again, and I like that.

“My mother’s still living,” Robie added quietly, “but she has Alzheimer’s disease, so it’s too bad that she won’t know about it.”

Davidson said that the Coronet Theatre is in a “prime area, central to the industry and to communities where parents are supportive of the arts. It’s a nice area where people can bring their children and feel reasonably secure.

“A lot of people are going to try it. Then it’ll be up to the quality of our work to hold them.” Serendipity won’t be an “elitist” organization, she added. “Ticket prices will allow families to buy a season without breaking their backs.”

A full six-play season will cost $50 per adult and $30 per child. A three-play subscription is also planned. Individual ticket prices will be $6 per child, $10 per adult.

“We’re going for a variety of theater styles, subject matter and sources, and we’re working with scripts by some of the best new playwrights, with classics and adaptations of modern children’s classics,” Davidson said.

“We have a strong network with playwrights and other producing organizations. ‘Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing’ is coming to us from the Seattle Children’s Theater, ‘Frog and Toad’ from the Emmy Gifford Theatre in Omaha. We’re working to get the rights to another show from the Minneapolis Children’s Theater.”

The Davidsons refused to talk about their break with the Laguna Playhouse, but Scott Davidson said that he’s looking forward to being in a theater “strictly devoted to children’s theater, as opposed to being a facility where you’re the second or third cousin and if something else comes up you get bumped to a lesser facility.”

Laguna Playhouse business manager Katy Realista said that the Davidsons left to go “on to bigger and better things. It was time for them to move on. The youth theater was outgrowing its space here. They needed more weekends--the main stage sells out 97% of each year,” and a planned second theater “never came through.”

Jody Davidson stressed that she and her husband are not first-timers in the field. She has a master’s degree in children’s theater, 10 years of creative and administrative experience with the Rainbow Company youth theater that she created in Las Vegas, and more than four years in Laguna as general manager.

Scott Davidson acted and taught at the Rainbow company. Under his tenure in Laguna as children’s theater artistic director, the Laguna Playhouse Youth Theatre was named the outstanding new amateur children’s theater of 1989 by the American Alliance for Theatre and Education.